Published 9:33 pm, Saturday, February 4, 2012

If you follow state government, you've heard arguments about the issues — for and against — in some cases dating back years.

But amid the debate, a newly formed "coalition of opposites" wants to reframe the discussion, arguing that the best way to run New York in the 21st century is by amending the state constitution.

"A high percentage of New Yorkers are delighted with how New York is being run now — it's functioning, and we're getting some things done. But for the culture to really be reformed, you've got to go to the constitution," said Bill Samuels, a plastics magnate and Democratic donor.

"It's an arcane topic, but it's incredibly important. Every time people turn around, there's a constitutional issue," said Gerald Benjamin, a professor at SUNY New Paltz and expert on New York's government and constitution.

Both have joined with Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, who has lent his bully pulpit to "engage every stakeholder in the state." They've formed the Citizens Committee for an Effective Constitution and launched a website (http://www.effectiveny.com) to gather scholarship and background on various topics. There will also be an essay contest for law students, with $1,000 prizes going to the winners.

Probably the most relevant current example concerns legislative redistricting. The state constitution says it shall be the purview of the Legislature to draw its own lines, a system which has yielded the current task force called LATFOR, controlled jointly by Democrats who dominate the Assembly and Republicans who have a bare 32-seat majority in the Senate.

Good-government groups, Senate Democrats and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have panned the draft map LATFOR produced last month, but the task force's members point, rightly, to constitutional provisions asserting their dominion over the process.

But most of those provisions were drafted in 1894, when Republicans who dominated state government actively worked to dilute the power of New York City, which was rapidly filling with immigrants assimilated into Democratic political machines.

Those provisions ensured every county in the state had a representative in the Senate, which tilted the chamber in favor of less-populated upstate areas. These were undone by court decisions in the 1960s. It also laid out an arcane formula for the number of seats the Senate contains, based on population growth and the number of representatives each county had in 1894, that is now the subject of a court case.

"We're arguing, right now, on what the boundaries of counties were in 1894 — before the Bronx existed — and how that bears upon whether the Senate should have 63 members," said Benjamin. "It's absurd!"

Both the power and the problem with the constitution is how difficult it is to change. There are two basic methods: by individual amendments or through a constitutional convention. Voters may approve a constitutional convention in a referendum that can be placed on the ballot by the Legislature. (It appears automatically every 20 years; voters their most recent automatic choice in 1997.)

Legislators may also amend the document piecemeal, though it is not easy. Members of two successively elected legislatures must pass a bill proposing an amendment for voters to approve in a general election. In recent years it has been used to remove some land-use restrictions in the Adirondack Park, parts of which the constitution mandates shall be "forever kept wild."

Cuomo said he believed a constitutional amendment was the only way to change redistricting, an approach favored by Senate Republicans, who note it would not be implemented in time to affect this decade's cycle.

Kolb said he would favor an amendment to set up an independent line-drawing panel, as well as removing language that forces Senate districts to respect county lines and Assembly districts not to split towns.

Cuomo has also pushed legislators to amend the constitution to remove its ban on casino gambling. Also, a court case last year raised serious questions, which the state's highest court ultimately rejected, about whether government can give subsidies for economic development projects like the incentives it gave to chipmaker GlobalFoundries in Saratoga County.

Kolb has long advocated, unsuccessfully, for a constitutional convention. That is not an explicit goal of this new effort, he said, but in a Capitol dominated by partisanship, he sees changing the constitution as a way to effect permanent change.

"It takes the politics out of it once you get it done," he said. "Especially for things where the Legislature has been prone not to act."